Not since My Girl has female youth been so sexy: A Review of Juno

There's something beautiful about a pregnant 16-year-old—something that screams fertility and evolutionary fitness—which, when combined with proof of her intelligence and doe-eyed innocence, is enough to make the honest man bare his teeth and shout to Eros. I was in a theater in Gadsden, AL when I saw such a female, and so I politely refrained from shouting. Her name is Juno, and she lives in the world of fiction, out of my reach forever.

The plot is simple: Juno gets fucked. Juno gets pregnant. But she is too young to beget a child, says Middle Class America. Or is she? Doing what most females don't have the courage to do, Juno decides to beget the child and give it up for adoption. The couple she chooses—upper-middle-class white bread residing in the exurbs—is portrayed to near perfection. And everything goes smoothly until the husband of the couple wisens up. If, being a man, you were presented with an infertile woman in the dusk of youth, on the one hand, and a demonstrably fecund lass on the other, which one would you choose? Right. And what happens if the 2nd place woman learns of your preference? Right. Darwinism and morality go to war in this incredibly scientific depiction of the Battle Between the Sexes.

But there is one glaring flaw in the otherwise theory-consisent film: the guy who impregnates Juno, Paulie Bleeker (played by Michael Cera), is the consummate beta-male. Indeed, that gives him too much credit—Paulie is a delta. He is weak, timid, and far from mesomorphic. And so it a mystery why Juno falls in love with him. Even more of a mystery is that Juno is the first to confess her love. This extremely vulnerable move is something that the female sex has cunningly learned to avoid. To quote H.L. Mencken: "They never acknowledge that they have fallen in love, as the phrase is, until the man has formally avowed the delusion, and so cut off his retreat; to do otherwise would be to bring down upon their heads the mocking and contumely of all their sisters." But these errors can be forgiven, and the movie is worth seeing.